West Branch Area SD

West Branch Area SD

West Branch had some challenges getting support for devices and granularity with their old filtering provider. To see if Smoothwall is right for your district, get started with a trial in your network today.

Education Industry

1,300 Users

Secure Web Gateway

Customized web filtering policies

Remote device filtering

Bandwidth limiting for rich media

What’s the background?

The West Branch Area School District is located in Clearfield County, central Pennsylvania. The District currently has approximately 1,300 students enrolled, kindergarten through high school, as well as 160 faculty members.

The IT Team is headed by Network Administrator Aaron Prisk, and it provides IT services for an elementary school and a high school.

Onsite and remote internet access is required by staff, students and guests across a wide range of devices. The District supplies a mix of laptops, desktops and tablets on premise.

There is also a BYOD program for students who prefer accessing the internet from their own devices.

What was the problem?

After becoming increasingly frustrated with their client-based web filter being unable to filter 1-to-1 devices outside the network, the IT Team decided it was time to look for a clientless solution that could handle off-site filtering. “We had a lot of issues going with the client route, and a lot of our newer devices didn’t support clients.”

They were also looking for more granularity. “We had an all or nothing approach; you either block everything or allow everything,” explained Aaron. Being able to customize web filter policies for individual users and groups would eliminate extra work when unblocking web resources for students or staff.

Additionally, their existing filter made it impossible to manage student access to YouTube or set bandwidth policies for rich media, streaming and downloads.

How Smoothwall helped

Aaron chose Smoothwall’s SWG to protect students, staff and guests. From day one they saw a drastic improvement, with the Who, What, Where, When functionality providing the much needed granularity, and the hierarchy making it possible to prioritize policy rules. “One of the biggest draws was the added granularity that Smoothwall was able to offer.”

Now that West Branch have Smoothwall, the ability to go clientless has resolved the previous issues with remote internet access of district owned devices. “SWG’s clientless functionality is huge; it worked so well, that we’ve been able to open up to students to bring their own devices.”

By eliminating their issues with over blocking Smoothwall has saved West Branch a lot of time in productivity for staff. “Smoothwall has reduced requests for white listing and black listing by about 90% down to about one site a month.”

Additionally, Aaron explained how SWG’s YouTube features have made it possible for the IT team to open up YouTube safely for students working offsite. “Students can now access YouTube from home without it slowing down the entire network.”

Finally, the IT Team has been able to apply bandwidth limits for rich media, streaming and downloads. “Managing and reporting on our user’s access is much simpler than before.”